The president undermines that chance when he struggles through a news conference with no apparent theme or overarching purpose other than to catalog his grievances and complain about the lack of cooperation from the other side.

This may well have been the opposite impression from what the president and his people hoped to convey this week. But it happened anyway. Well into his fifth year in the White House, this president still seems ill at ease in the news conference format. He is driven by the energy and conflict of the encounter, rather than the other way around.

This lack of mastery stands in striking contrast to his renown for holding throngs in thrall, at home and abroad. Even in the informality of a Washington dinner (), Obama is a gifted presenter, holding forth with the timing and wit of a professional comedian and then turning reflective and serious. Addressing an audience, he is nearly always on.

A legend in his own mind and in the minds of the lamestream media. Plus, nothing to lecture the rubes or preen about.

The emperor has no clothes.

A revealing new book from one of media’s longest-serving White House correspondents reports that President Obama surrounds himself only with “idolizers,” and top aides make sure that those whose views might “shake him up too much” are shoved aside.
. . .
He called top Chicago aide Valerie Jarrett “one of the leading idolizers” who blocks the access of critics to her boss. “Jarrett has gone too far in limiting others’ access to the president, according to a number of White House and congressional sources,” writes Walsh in the book, due out June 1. “Her goal is to keep Obama in a cocoon of admirers who won’t, in her mind, shake him up too much or present views that might be contrary to her understanding of Obama’s positions.”

Democratic pollster Peter Hart told Walsh that Obama is more a performer than seasoned politician. “He likes performing. He likes crowds,” said the pollster. But Hart added that Obama’s White House is too distant from those in Congress who can help him. “It’s closed. It’s insular. It’s shut out.”

Power constrains because it entails responsibility, and Alinskyite tactics are designed to take advantage of those constraints for the benefit of the powerless. Such tactics have backfired on Obama repeatedly because he seems not to understand that they are ill-suited to power politics.
. . .
Obama has actually never “been adept at marshaling public support” except in his election campaigns. His gun-control speeches “drew wide praise” from people who already agreed with what he said, and that praise was deafeningly loud because the praisers include most people with media megaphones [ed. “courtiers“].